In Your Dreams
by WRTRD
Summary: There's a whole lot of dreaming going on, but no one's admitting it. Set in S2. Complete.
1. Chapter 1

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

 **A/N** Perspex13 wrote a story that included the line "Dreams have to start somewhere." I loved it and asked if I might use it as a prompt, and he very kindly gave me permission. So, this is for you, Perspex13.

Richard Castle has always dreamed a lot. When he was a boy, his phantom father, in various guises, often drifted or stormed or sailed or flew through his sleep. At thirteen Rick crossed the PG dream line, and girls supplanted his imagined father. By the time he was in his early twenties he was a father himself, with full custody of his toddler daughter. For a long period his dreams almost invariably involved Alexis: happy, sunlit ones or ones of full-out terror in which he failed to protect her in some unforgivable way. But she's a teenager now and oddly he worries less, maybe because she's so level-headed.

Like any red-blooded man, he has sexually-charged dreams, too, though the partners in them change on a rapid and routine basis. But six months ago he crossed paths and swords with someone, and it has upended both his waking and sleeping hours. Since then he has dreamed almost nightly of the same woman, the same unobtainable woman. Who'd have thought it? He, Richard Castle, is pining for an unobtainable woman. He's always had his pick, but now what he wants to pick is the human equivalent of a long-stemmed rose, complete with endless legs and endless thorns. One of the differences between an actual rose and this particular rose-like human is that the former cannot glare and the latter not only can but does. She glares at him frequently, except in his dreams. In his dreams she smiles at him, and if she bares her teeth it's just to give him a love bite. Yes, Kate Beckett has fine, fine teeth.

He's sitting at his desk, indulging in the guilty pleasure of thinking about his first Beckett-centric dream. It was in March, and was so explicit that when he saw her at the precinct the next morning he nearly spilled coffee all over himself. He almost regretted that he hadn't, since it would have given him an excuse to go to the men's room and calm down. She had something of a tomboy look then, short hair, practical blouses and pants, not much makeup. In his dreams there was nothing tomboyish about her at all; slim-hipped, yes, but that was it. When he'd wrapped his hands around her hips in that first dream, they'd met over her flat stomach, the skin taut as a drum and soft as a cloud. It's in his pantheon of great dreams, unfuc—

"Dad? You ready?"

Oh, God, Alexis. She might as well have caught him in flagrante delicto. He sits up so suddenly in his office chair when she calls him that he smashes his knee against the top of his desk. "Yes! Be right there."

She's standing on the staircase, waiting for him to take her annual first-day-of-school photo, even though she has been telling him all week that since she's a sophomore now she's too old for this. He disagrees.

"Listen," he says as he snaps at least a dozen pictures. "At least I don't hide across the street from school any more to make sure that you got in all right."

"You stopped doing that only last year, and only 'cause I threatened to get a nose ring if you didn't."

"Would you really have gone through with it?"

"No, Dad, ewww! But it was worth saying it just to see how horrified you looked."

"Ah, an idle threat then. I don't suppose I can take you to school this morning?"

"No way."

"How about walking you as far as the subway?"

"That would be nice."

Not long after he's back at his desk, as jittery as if he's had six cups of coffee. He looks at his mug; he might have, he's lost track. He's a wreck. Not about Alexis, but about Beckett. He hasn't seen her all summer. Dreamed about her, though? That's another story. Constantly. Since coming back from the Hamptons a few days ago he's been revisiting those dreams a lot, mentally cataloguing them. He can see the shift in them now, track the growth: they began as erotica, but over time they developed into something else. He still has sexual dreams about her—about them—but he has more in which they're just talking. Sometime it's an aimless chat in which they make each other laugh, sometimes they talk about books or movies or science or cases or politics or pet peeves. "You're my pet peeve, Castle," she'd said in one. And when he'd said, "But you love me," she'd answered, "Yeah, I do."

He honestly loves her for her mind, not just her body. It's the kind of bullshit line he'd have used on a woman in the past, but this time it's true. He loves her curiosity and her drive, her sense of humor and her spikiness, her quiet side and her athleticism. He loves everything about her, and she's unobtainable.

The last time he'd seen or talked to her was that day in June when he'd told her that he'd found some real information concerning her mother's murder. He'd said it in the hospital corridor outside Sorenson's room and she'd dragged him by the elbow into a stairwell and erupted. Even though he'd laid out what he'd found about her mother's case, her rage at him for looking into what she'd asked him to leave alone trumped the evidence that the forensic pathologist had found. She'd said, "We're done," and stalked out of the room.

He's a wreck today because he's worried about her reaction when she learns what's going to happen at the precinct. _Heat Wave_ is coming out next week; this morning at the Twelfth there's a _Cosmo_ photo shoot for a feature about him and the book, complete with models who'll be skimpily dressed as stripper cops. Female stripper cops. He wants to get a chance to explain, to apologize and explain everything, but he's probably not going to get it. At least he'll get to see her. That's better than nothing. Isn't it? He'll know in a couple of hours.

Kate Beckett has never dreamed much. Even as a little girl she was far more given to day dreams than to those which played out in her unconscious mind. In the immediate aftermath of her mother's death she wished that she could dream, that visions of her mother alive and well would come to her as she slept, but they didn't. Later, as her father slipped deeper and deeper into a 60-proof pit, and any possibility of the police solving—even caring about—her mother's murder slipped farther and farther away, the only dreams she had were nightmares.

In her first couple of years on the force she didn't have many. She was so exhausted from her job, from trying to prove herself, from stealing hours to work in secret on her mother's long-shelved case, that her short nights of sleep were heavy and blank. She assumed—when she had the time to assume—that she must have dreamed sometimes, but she never remembered having done so.

When spring arrived this year, it brought something new with it: Richard Castle. He came into her life uninvited and as unwelcome as fleas, ticks, mosquitoes, and every other pest that warm weather carries. He got under skin in the worst way, and no matter how hard she scratched he didn't go away. But then he'd do something smart or kind or generous and she'd find herself reassessing him—until he screwed it up again.

She was loath to admit it, even to herself, but from day one they had astonishing chemistry. As the weeks elapsed, as he worked on more and more homicides with her and the boys, she tried to ignore it, that explosive, blow-up-the-lab chemistry. Worse, she even began to like him. Not all the time, God, no, but some of the time. Like in the child-abduction case they'd worked with Sorenson. When he'd snottily called Castle Nancy Drew, Castle had defended one of the idols of her childhood. "Is that supposed to be an insult?" he'd asked. "Because Nancy Drew solved every case." He'd been phenomenal on that one, had even worn a wire. Incredibly brave. That night was the first time it happened: she dreamed about him. It's still so vivid: they were on a stakeout in some dark, grubby place and were bantering the way they'd been doing in reality for the last few weeks, and then somehow bantering shamelessly and inexplicably led to some significant making out. She'd woken in the middle of the night, breathing hard and wondering why the camisole that she'd worn to bed was now on the floor next to it and she was all but naked. And sweaty.

Was that why she'd decided to go out on a date with Sorenson? She'd known it was a bad idea, a dead end; Castle had said so too, if not quite that way. She'd gone out with the Feeb, her ex, not because she had feelings for him but because she wasn't prepared to have the writer in her dreamscape. Not at all. The next week, the next freaking week, Castle had told her that he'd been digging into her mother's case and she'd wanted to kill him. Instead she'd just thrown him out. He was as good as dead to her. She thought.

By the second week of summer she'd gotten rid of Sorenson, too. She was still furious with Castle, but as days without him went by, she acknowledged, if only to the deepest, most heavily guarded part of her herself, that even though he'd gone against her wishes he'd done it without malice. And he'd found something. A lead. A promise.

And then something weird and unexpected happened: for the first time in her life she began to dream. As June gave way to July, and July slid into August, she dreamed more and more, and as the weather heated up, so did her dreams. The chemistry she had been repressing all spring ignited when she fell asleep. The lab blew up at three or times a week, right behind her eyelids, and the people running the chemistry experiments were Richard Castle and Katherine Beckett. Holy fuck. Unholy fuck. What was going on in her brain?

It's September now. The Captain told her yesterday that Castle would be in the precinct today for a photo shoot for the book. She's grown her hair over the summer. She wonders if he'll notice. She doesn't care if he notices. He's out of her life, or will be by the end of the day. He found a lead to her mother's case but she doesn't care about that, either. If she follows it she's doomed. She had spent too much time pulling herself out of that abyss, and she's not going back. She'll shake Castle's hand and that will be it. Except, oh, God, his hands. Just last night in her dream his hands had—. STOP IT. Not that she'd said stop it in the dream. Quite the opposite. She looks at her own hand and notices that it's trembling.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

Goddammit, Castle. Goddammit. Beckett is at her desk, clenching her teeth so hard that she's getting a headache. She'd arrived at the precinct yesterday morning fully prepared to say goodbye politely, it's been nice working with you but I'm not discussing my mother's case, and that would have been it. Done and dusted, as her grandmother liked to say.

And there he'd been, posing and smirking with those appalling stripper cops who were dressed worse than she ever had been in Vice. She'd had to watch him lapping it all up while she was talking to that ridiculous reporter from _Cosmo_. And then he'd said it wasn't his fault, it was the magazine's idea. Yeah, well, was it the magazine's idea that he had to love it? He loved it! She hates him for it. She hates him even more for having worn that light blue shirt and that custom-tailored pin-striped suit and worse, for not having shaved. That's the kind of detail that insinuates itself into her dreams, comes slithering in and wraps itself around her brain. Goddammit.

In the middle of the the faux cop stripathon extravaganza, they'd caught a body, a murdered insurance actuary turned drug mule. Montgomery had told her that she had to cooperate, to let Castle work on it and let the reporter ride along, all for the sake of good press for the NYPD. It's "a magazine that people actually read," the captain had said. _Cosmo_. Geez. Fine, she'd cooperated. And Castle had agreed, had promised her that he'd stay for just that one case and then be gone, leave her alone.

At the start of their investigation, Castle had been okay, had made some good observations about the body, which was in a tree. She hates thinking about it now, but they'd been in real synch on it. And he had seemed contrite about having looked into her mother's case, even though he'd reminded her again that he'd uncovered something important about it. When she'd gotten home late last night she'd had an inexplicable urge to reread an old Derrick Storm novel. Propped up in bed with the book on her knees, she'd gotten sucked right in. It was even better than she'd remembered, but when she'd been five chapters in she'd fallen asleep.

 _She and Castle are on a rooftop that's outlined with fairy lights. It's the rooftop where they'd met last spring. They're having dinner at a beautiful table for two, set with candles and fresh flowers. The only other person there is a waiter who's standing discreetly several yards away. He's close enough to see them, should they want anything, but not close enough to hear their conversation._

 _"_ _These are my favorite, purple hyacinths," she says, leaning in to smell them. "I wonder how they found them in September?"_

 _"_ _I know a guy."_

 _"_ _You know a guy?"_

 _"_ _Of course. For everything that's a favorite of yours, I have a guy."_

 _"_ _What do you mean?"_

 _He starts counting off on his fingers: "Flowers, shampoo, cookies, wines, coffee, color, shoes, books, rock bands, soap—"_

 _"_ _How do you know what my favorite soap is, for God's sake? Or cookie?"_

 _"_ _I'm a detective, Beckett. Not like you, but I have finely-tuned powers of observation. And one hell of a memory, when it comes to you. Your cookie? It was during our third case together, the prep-school murder, remember?"_

 _"_ _Of course I remember the case. But what did it have to do with cookies?"_

 _"_ _We were walking through the park and I said I was hungry and you said, 'Sorry I don't happen to have a cookie on me, Castle.' I said that was okay but I asked you if you had a favorite and you said, 'Yeah. 'Nilla wafers dipped in hot fudge sauce.' Ever since then I've had both on hand. For an emergency."_

 _"_ _Are you kidding?"_

 _"_ _No. And if you come home with me after this I'll prove it to you. Dessert in bed, Beckett. Nothing better. And if there's extra hot fudge sauce left over we could put it to really good use."_

She shakes her head. In her dream they had definitely put it to good use: he'd licked the chocolate off her and she'd licked it off him. His talents with his tongue were every bit the equal of his gifts with his hands. She slaps her desktop. No! She's not wasting time running through this dream again. Except to remember when she took off his pin-striped suit jacket, the one he'd been wearing in real life yesterday, and unbuttoned his light blue shirt and began to run her palms over his unbelievably muscular chest. "Just wait," he'd whispered, his warm breath tickling her neck. "I'm gonna earn my stripes."

But as they'd pursued the case today he'd driven her crazy, making smart-ass remarks the way he had when they'd first worked together. Then he'd had an insane idea of crashing the underground Russian-mob poker game. Okay, he'd gotten important information as a result, but he was so rash, grandstanding like that, and she'd had to go in and haul his ass out of there. When they'd wrapped everything up a few hours ago she could tell that he hoped that she'd change her mind and let him stay. And in fact, she'd been softening, could feel it in every part of her. They'd had a nice little bantering session about being good partners: Tango and Cash, Turner and Hooch. And then he'd ruined it. She'd been sitting at her desk, right where she is now, and he'd told her she was afraid of looking into her mother's case. She'd kicked him out. That was two hours ago, and she's still seething. Goddammit, Castle. Goddammit.

Castle runs down the stairs of his building, not willing to wait for the elevator to come back up from the basement, and hails an oncoming cab. Out of the mouths of babes, he thinks. Or 15-years-olds. His daughter isn't a baby anymore, and what she'd said to him two minutes ago will, please God, make all the difference. Her boyfriend had been late for their date, they'd missed the movie, and he'd shrugged it off. "Why do boys do that?" Alexis had asked him just now. "Why do they always have to justify everything? Why can't they just say they're sorry?" He'd hugged her and thanked her, and now he's on his way to the Twelfth to apologize. Sincerely. He'll say he's sorry without trying to justify what he'd done. He's praying that she's still there.

He'd been stunned when he'd seen her yesterday morning, for the first time in three months. Her hair is longer, full around her face, lighter. Everything about her seemed lighter and softer—until she'd gotten so mad at him. He'd thought they were going to be okay, once they started working on the case. When they'd been looking at the poor bastard whose body was jammed in the tree they clicked together like two perfectly calibrated pieces in a gazillion-dollar Swiss watch. He'd thought that she'd take him back, had even dreamed about it last night, before he'd woken up and made an ass of himself today.

 _They're sitting side by side on a park bench in the afternoon. It must be the peak of autumn because the leaves are brilliant yellows and rich oranges; the sun is low but not down. They're both drinking coffee, and her right hand is nestled in his left. He lifts them up and kisses her fingers very lightly; she inches a little closer to him._

 _"_ _Do you like trees, Castle?"_

 _"_ _I love trees, unless they have dead bodies in them. What about you?"_

 _"_ _I love them, too. They're, I dunno, so elemental. I know it's corny, but the tree of life, everything, I love that. I love that even in the bitterest part of winter you can tell that they're protecting buds. That the leaves will open again, that spring and summer will come again. I love them in the winter, you know?"_

 _"_ _Why's that?"_

 _"_ _Because you can see their skeletons."_

 _"_ _Geez, Beckett, how homicidal of you."_

 _"_ _Not that way, Castle," she says, and pokes his foot with the toe of her boot. "You can see the structure so well when the branches are bare. See the way the tree's growing, the twists it might be making. The scars it got when a branch broke off in a storm years before. It's telling you a story. You should appreciate that."_

 _"_ _I appreciate that you're telling me a story. So, what about it? You climb trees when you were a kid? Swing from branches? Terrify your parents by shinnying up to the top?"_

 _"_ _Oh, yeah. Broke my elbow once when I fell out of a huge old oak outside our cabin." She reflexively bends her elbow a few times, and stretches her arm. "Still got a little scar from where they put a temporary pin in."_

 _"_ _How come I've never seen this little scar of yours?"_

 _She gives him one of those looks, the kind that would make him do anything. Truly, anything. "You must not have been looking," she says at last, eying him over the lid on her cup. She's worried the edge of it with her teeth, making_ _the plastic a little ragged. He worries that she'll cut her lip._

 _"_ _That's because you distract me with other body parts."_

 _She looks at him again, for a long time. Her face isn't giving away a thing. Finally she says, "If you kiss it, I'll come."_

What? Shit, someone just said something, right when he was getting to the best part of the dream. Oh, it's the cab driver. "I'm sorry, I didn't catch that?"

"I said, you want the left side or the right up there?"

"Left, please. Near corner."

He gets out of the taxi, runs his fingers through his hair, and makes sure that his shirt is tucked in. "Evening, Sarge," he says as he walks into the building.

"Midnight oil, Castle?" the soon-to-retire Kirby asks.

"Something like that. Beckett still here?"

"Unless she used a transporter to get herself outta the building, yeah."

"Thanks. May the force be with you."

"It is. And don't forget it."

"Right." The elevator doors can't close quickly enough for him. When they do, he runs his fingers through his hair again, for good measure. He wants to look serious when he talks to her. He is serious.

There she is, right where he'd left her. She's the only person in the bullpen, and she's bent over paperwork when he comes to a stop in front of her desk. Keep it short, keep it simple, he's been telling himself. And he does. He doesn't try to justify having looked into her mother's murder, just apologizes as profoundly and economically as he ever has and then walks away. She's silent and he can hardly bear it, but if this is it, this is it. He's almost at the elevator when he hears her call his name; he stops mid-stride and pivots to look in her direction.

"See you tomorrow."

That's all. The three sweetest words he's ever heard from her, with the exception of "I love you," which she's said to him in a dream. He smiles and leaves. In the elevator he collapses against the wall and hopes that his breathing has returned to normal by the time he reaches the ground floor.

"Night, Kirby."

"Night, Castle."

He decides to walk home, to breathe in the early fall air in great gulps. It's safe to dream about her now.

She waits a few minutes before gathering her paperwork into a neat pile. She puts on her jacket and leaves, holding in her smile until she's out on the sidewalk. She decides to walk home, to breathe in the early fall air in great gulps. It's safe to dream about him again.

TBC

 **A/N** Thank you very much for your enthusiasm for this story. I really appreciate the good cheer. I'll be at a conference for three days so I probably won't be able to post the next chapter until Tuesday.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

 _"_ _Are you sure this is a good idea?" She looks worried, enough that there's a small crease between her eyebrows. "It seems really risky to me."_

 _"_ _No one's going to see us, Beckett," he says soothingly. "The door's locked, and my mother and Alexis are both away all weekend."_

 _"_ _I'm relieved to know that, but it's not the risk I meant. You don't worry about this?"_

 _"_ _What? Stir-frying while naked? Absolutely not. It's like we're at one with nature. Naked chickens, naked vegetables, naked us." He waves a large wooden spoon over the chopping board. "As God intended. Like the Garden of Eden."_

 _"_ _Yeah, well, that didn't turn out so well for Adam and Eve."_

 _"_ _There are no apples in this stir-fry. I think we're safe. OWWW!" He grabs a towel and wipes off a few drops of oil that splattered an inch below his navel._

 _"_ _Told you, Castle. You're lucky that splashed on your stomach and not on anything farther south."_

 _Something's burning. It's his flesh, isn't it? Oh, my God, he's more badly burned than he thought. There's smoke. Smoke!_

He sits up so suddenly that it makes his head hurt, and he rubs his eyes and looks in the direction of the kitchen. Something's burning, all right, but it's not him. It's the two loaves of pumpkin bread that he'd put in the oven before he'd unaccountably fallen asleep on the sofa. Maybe not so unaccountably, given how late his Hallowe'en party had run last night, and how much he'd had to drink. He'd slept right through the timer. He gets up, grabs two mitts, yanks the smoldering loaves from the oven, and dumps them into the sink.

He always bakes this the day after Hallowe'en: it makes good use of the pumpkins that he hasn't carved, and kicks off the pre-Thanksgiving season. This is the first autumn that he's worked at the Twelfth and he'd wanted to take the bread in for everyone. He looks at the charred loaves and sighs. Even the birds wouldn't eat this. Even the pigeons would choose subway rat over this, he says to himself as he turns on the kitchen fan to help dispel the horrible smell.

Birds. Wasn't he just dreaming about birds? Yes! It's coming back to him. Chickens! Garden of Eden! Beckett naked! Wearing not so much as a fig leaf. He grins happily at the memory, and then thinks about how she'd been dressed at the party last night. When she'd untied the belt on her trench coat he'd hoped for a nanosecond that she'd be naked underneath. Instead, she'd unleashed that creature. It had come flying out and nearly given him a heart attack. Seeing her naked in the kitchen had had a hell of an effect on him, too, but regrettably that had been in his dream. Damn.

It's late the next morning, well after ten, when he steps into the bullpen with coffees for him and Beckett and a large box of pumpkin muffins—not his, alas, but at least they're from a really good bakery.

"Thanks, Castle," she says, after taking the first sip of her latte. "Thanks for the party, too. You spend yesterday recovering?"

"Something like that," he says off-handedly. "You have a nice weekend?" He wonders what the odds are that she'd cooked naked in your apartment. What are the odds that she'd cooked at all? She lives on takeout. Maybe he'll invite her over for (fully clothed) stir-fry. Just casually.

"Caught up on a lot of reading. Oh." She smiles up at him. "I saw a story in the London _Times_ that's your brand of weird. I was going to send you the link, but I figured you might like a print out. You must have a weird-story collection in a file cabinet somewhere, right?"

"You read a British newspaper?"

"Yeah. When I have time."

"Wow."

"World view, Castle, world view."

"Right. So, uh, what's the weird story?"

She opens the top drawer of her desk and takes out a sheet of paper. "It's about naked chickens."

He can't possibly have heard her correctly. Is he dreaming now? That can't be, can it? If you ask yourself if you're dreaming you're not dreaming, right? He needs to focus very, very hard. "Sorry, what?"

"Naked chickens. Well, people who make sweaters for battery-cage chickens who lost their feathers."

"Naked chickens?"

"Geez, do you have water in your ears? Yes." She waves the paper at him. "Here, you can read all about it. It's called Little Hen Rescue and people knit adorable sweaters for the chickens to keep them warm."

He still can't believe it. "What about vegetables?"

She's got that little crease between her eyebrows, just like she had when they'd been making stir-fry. In the dream. If it was a dream. "Vegetables?"

"Vegetables. Do they knit sweaters for vegetables?"

"Why would they do that?"

"Because they're naked."

"Check your coffee, Castle, I think it might be spiked."

"I'm gonna go to the break room. Put the muffins out for everyone."

She watches him walk away. He's definitely strange today, like something's off, except that he doesn't seem upset. Huh. Maybe he's not sleeping well. She's definitely sleeping well. She's never slept this well, at least not in her adult life, and she gives Castle the credit. Privately, of course. It's unvoiced credit, in-her-mind-only acknowledgement. They've been inching closer. That case a couple of weeks ago had been devastating, and they'd both felt it deeply. A doctor had murdered a young woman who was the mother of a baby whom he'd raised as his own, having secretly switched her baby with his because his had a fatal disease. And then there was Castle's dedication in his book: to her. To her! And he'd called her extraordinary. She'd never expected that. And now he'll be following her for who knows how long, since he just got a juicy contract for more books. It surprises her to realize how recently she'd have been tempted to quit her job rather than have him around, but now? Now. And he'd chosen her over James Bond. She can feel her cheeks reddening. Good thing Espo and Ryan are out.

She cranes her neck and sees that Castle's still in the break room. Maybe she should ask him if everything's all right, if he's sleeping all right. Her alarm had woken her this morning, an almost unheard of event, and she'd been right in the middle of a dream about Castle. She'd worked hard on remembering it, before it slipped away. She'd bought a notebook a while ago and stashed it in her night table; whenever she dreams of Castle, she records what she can reconstruct. God help her if anyone ever finds it. Maybe she should keep it locked in her safe. Take it out only to write in, and then put it away again.

 _They're in her car and it's dark. They must be on a stakeout. "You like roller coasters, Beckett?" Castle is eating his way through a bag of Fritos._

 _"_ _The Coney Island kind or the emotional kind?"_

 _"_ _Well, I was going for Coney Island, but since you brought it up, how do you feel about the emotional kind?"_

 _"_ _I wasn't so crazy about them last week."_

 _"_ _Last week? What happened?"_

 _She turns in her seat and glares at him. There's enough ambient light that he must be able to see her. "Are you kidding? What happened?"_

 _"_ _Yeah, what happened?"_

 _"_ _You, you baboon."_

 _"_ _I'm sure you meant that as an insult, but baboons are highly intelligent. And crafty."_

 _She glares again, since the first time apparently hadn't worked. "_ _You told Lanie that I'd tried on that slutty nurse costume for you."_

 _"_ _You did. It was fantastic."_

 _"_ _And then you told her that you couldn't wait to play doctor."_

 _"_ _Also true."_

 _She jabs him in the center of his chest and he winces, even through a heavy jacket. "That's supposed to be a secret."_

 _"_ _Geez, I told her I was only kidding."_

 _"_ _Well, news bulletin, she didn't believe you. It took me an hour and two over-priced Cosmos to get her to change her mind."_

 _"_ _Let's talk about Coney Island roller coasters, then. Seems like a safer subject." He unwraps a Snickers bar and bites off a chunk._

 _"_ _The first place I ever kissed a boy was on a roller coaster. Richie Montaldo. Summer before eighth grade."_

 _"_ _You did? Didn't you worry about the other kids seeing you? You're not much of a one for PDA."_

 _"_ _Nope. We were in the last car and I kissed him just before we got to the top, so no one could see."_

 _"_ _Aha, the awakening sexuality of little Katie Beckett." He takes another bite of the Snickers. "Was Richie Montaldo a good kisser?"_

 _"_ _I don't really remember, since on the way down on the roller coaster he threw up all over me. It's a miracle that I ever kissed a boy again."_

 _"_ _Lucky thing you got me, then. I never throw up."_

 _"_ _Which amazes me, considering what you eat."_

 _He crumples up the candy wrapper, shoves it inside the empty Fritos bag, and leans towards her. "Can I kiss you now?"_

 _"_ _Castle, we're on a stakeout."_

 _She's suddenly aware that his left hand is massaging her thigh. It's very erotically massaging the inner part of her thigh and moving tantalizingly higher. "No one can see us, Beckett. We're undetectable."_

That's when her alarm had gone off, and she'd come close to smashing the phone. She can almost feel his hand on her thigh now, like a phantom. She squeezes her legs together under her desk to drive the sensation away, but it doesn't work. Where the hell is Castle, anyway? She stands up and looks through the open door of the break room. He's sitting in there, playing some game on his phone.

"Hey, Castle," she calls from just outside the door. "Nice to see you hard at work. Since you're here and the boys aren't, why don't you make yourself useful and help me fill out the last bit of paperwork from the vampire case?"

"The boys aren't here?" he asks, looking up. "Where are they?"

"Some boring HR seminar that I've already sat through."

"So it's just us?" He looks happier.

"Yup, just us chickens." What's with him? He looks dumbstruck again, and he's just staring at her, so she pulls out her best chicken imitation, complete with clucks and flapping wings. He blinks hard, and swallows, but doesn't say a thing. "You okay, Castle?"

"Yeah."

"Not having trouble sleeping or anything, are you?"

"Me? Never. Totally sleeping."

"Okay, then, grab a file and get to work."

He's remarkably dedicated to the task, and they finish in an hour. He closes the folder, pushes it across the desk, and stretches.

"Good job, Castle. Wanna grab some lunch?"

"Kind of early, but sure." She's asking him to lunch. He'd eat lunch at 5:00 in the morning if necessary.

"Not so early for those of us who are here at seven-thirty."

"Point taken. You got somewhere in mind?"

"Have you seen that new Chinese place that opened last week on West Broadway? I heard they have great stir-fry." She's bending over to get her purse when she hears a terrifying rasping sound. It's Castle, and his face is purple. "Oh, my God. Are you choking? Are you? Nod your head, I can do the Heimlich."

"Nope, nope," he wheezes. "I'm fine. Really. Fine. Stir-fry it is."

TBC

 **A/N** Thank you again so much for your support for this story. And BTW, Little Hen Rescue and sweaters for chickens are real!


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

They'd gotten through Christmas, New Year's, and the anniversary of her mother's death, a four-week period when Beckett had withdrawn emotionally from everything. He'd been very careful around her during that time, knowing how tough it was for her. He'd thought it was safe now, that he could kid around with her more, flirt the way they had been before the holidays.

And then it happened. _She_ showed up: Kyra Blaine, the one who got away. The girl who had his heart and broke it so many years ago. Except that he's come to realize over the last several months that Kyra is not in fact the one who got away: Kate Beckett has his heart, and if he's not careful she'll be the one who gets away. He doesn't want that to happen, can't bear even to think about it. Hell no. No, no, no.

Could he have been any stupider? At the crime scene Beckett had said, "I take it she was someone very special." Then he, the 24-karat bozo, had answered, "She's the one that got away." Not, "A girlfriend from ages ago," or "Old flame, haven't seen her in years," or "Ancient history." Oh, no, he'd supplied the worst possible answer, "She's the one that got away," to the woman he's in love with and is hoping to—. Beckett hadn't said another word after he'd shoved his foot in his mouth. She'd just gotten on her cell and started asking Lanie questions while she'd walked away. He smacks himself in the head for the umpteenth time since one of Kyra's bridesmaids was found dead in a hotel armoire. Shit.

The day had gone from bad to horrific. He'd been talking to Kyra when Beckett came to pick him up, and when the bride-to-be left Beckett had taken a long, hard look at his long, sad face. She'd obviously inferred from his expression that that he was still in love with Kyra. Later on she'd kicked him out of the interrogation room where they'd been questioning Kyra's fiancé, Greg, and told him that he was too close to Kyra. The hammer blow was this: "You have to stay away from her, Castle, until this case is closed." He'd gone home then, and that's where he is now, sitting morosely in his dark office and drowning his very new sorrow in a glass of very old Scotch.

He jumps when his cell rings. It's Kyra, and she pleads with him to meet her. He says no at first, but he feels terrible for her, and agrees to meet her on the roof where they used to hang out in college, a lifetime ago. He gets his coat and keys, and leaves.

It's late, almost midnight, and Beckett's the only one in the bullpen. Five minutes ago she'd received an envelope of 8-by-11 surveillance photos, and she's radiating rage as she shuffles them again and again. "Son of a bitch," she says loudly, since no one can hear her. "You goddamn son of a bitch." It's Castle and Kyra Blaine. The pictures may be grainy, shot from a distance, and in black and white, but there's no question what's going on. "You couldn't leave it alone, Castle," she mumbles angrily. "You just couldn't leave her alone." She'd told him, ordered him, to stay away, and there he is on some freaking roof hugging a murder suspect—Kyra, The One Who Got Away—like she's the last woman on earth. Well, there's nothing to be done about it now, she knows, but there sure as hell will be in the morning. Time for her to go home and go to bed.

She's wearing a tee shirt and brushing her teeth. After rinsing her mouth out, she leans forward until she's almost touching the mirror. "You'd never know that Mom and Dad paid a fortune for my braces, would you? Look at my teeth. Snaggle tooth. I should get some of those invisible braces. How much do they cost?" Her reflection has no response, so she curls her lips and turns her head from side to side. "Kyra has perfect teeth. Way too perfect, if you ask me. Am I right? Yeah, way too straight. They look like they've been ironed. I bet Castle likes them, though." She straightens up and backs away a little from the mirror. "He likes things that are perfect. Did you notice how short she is? We must be a head taller than she is. But she nestles right into him. Bet he loves that, too, how her head hits the middle of his chest. Right, snuggle bug." She snaps off the light and stomps to bed. Even barefoot she can make a lot of noise, because she's in a fury. When she gets into bed and rolls onto her side. "Oh, and you had to kiss her, too, didn't you, Castle? A hug wasn't enough. I hate you." She thinks that she's too wound up to sleep, but she isn't.

 _"Sit down, Mister Castle."_

 _"Suddenly I'm Mister?"_

 _She points to the straight-backed chair on his side of the table in interrogation. "Sit down."_

 _"You're very hot when you're so domineering," he says, taking a seat. "Do you have a whip in your desk drawer?"_

 _"Have you been read your rights, Mister Castle?"_

 _"I'm under arrest?"_

 _"Yes, you are. And if you get up from that chair again I'll be compelled to cuff you."_

 _"Oh, I'm definitely getting up again."_

 _She wants to wipe that little smirk off his face. Smirking should be a felony. "Sit down and stay down."_

 _"Okay."_

 _"I'll read you your rights."_

 _"No need. I waive them."_

 _"You waive them? Duly noted." She writes something on the paper in her file._

 _"What's the charge?"_

 _"Public nudity." She isn't looking at him._

 _He laughs. "Surely you've noticed that I'm fully clothed."_

 _"You are now, but you and your possibly homicidal girlfriend were definitely undressing each other with your eyes last night on that roof."_

 _"Wait, so she's being charged, too?"_

 _"Yes, she's in another room being interrogated by Detectives Ryan and Esposito."_

 _He sits there for a long time. This could be the longest he's kept his mouth shut since she met him. And he's still wearing that soon-to-be-felonious smirk. He leans forward as far as he can and runs his unnecessarily blue eyes up and down her. "I don't have to undress you with my eyes."_

 _"I should hope not."_

 _"I have X-ray vision when it comes to you."_

 _"Mister Castle, I'd appreciate if you kept a professional tone."_

 _"Here's what I see, Detective Beckett. I see that you're wearing a sky-blue bra with lace trimming and a tiny blue satin bow. That tells me a lot, that under that very professional turtleneck and blazer you're wearing something alluring. Sexy. I bet if you stood up I could describe what you have on under your slacks. A thong? A bikini? Ah, your eyes just gave you away. Bikini it is. I bet it's very skimpy and I bet it matches your bra." He sits back smugly and folds his arms over his unnecessarily muscular chest._

 _When he squeezes his arms like that she can see his pecs move, sees his biceps swell under the arms of a shirt that unnecessarily matches his eyes. And holy mother of God, he's right. He just gave a perfect description of her underwear. "Are you aware of the seriousness of the charge being made against you?"_

 _"Not really. I was publicly naked on that police horse I borrowed a few years ago. Got a slap on the wrist. If you want to slap me on the butt, I'd accept that as punishment. Seems to me this is a pretty flimsy crime. Would you like to know about my underwear? As it happens, it's exactly the same color as yours. Sky blue silk boxers. I don't like tidy whities, Detective. I don't like being bunched up. So restraining, you know? If I'm going to be restrained, I want to be handcuffed. What do you say?" He thrusts his forearms at her, wrist pressed against wrist. "I like silk scarves, too. I bet you have some of those. Great restraints. Very sensual."_

 _"I assure you that this merits more than a slap on the wrist, Mister Castle."_

 _"Maybe I should call my attorney. On the other hand, if I'm going to be charged with public nudity I feel as if I really should be nude."_

 _Before she can respond he's unbuckled his belt, unzipped his pants, and pulled them off. "Mister Castle, I'm warning you."_

 _"Warning me?" He's raising an eyebrow. He snaps the waistband on his boxers—and they are indeed sky blue—then pushes them down and steps out of them. "I feel so much better now. So unrestrained. And growing more so with every passing second."_

 _He's not kidding. About the growing part._

She wakes up because the heat has come on full blast. That's no surprise in the middle of January, but still. Except wait, the radiator's not hissing. The heat hasn't come on, Castle has. She pulls the sheet over her head and groans.

Castle's standing in the middle of the kitchen, clutching a mug of coffee. Alexis has just taken off for school and his mother won't be up for ages, thank goodness. He's riddled with guilt for having gone to see Kyra last night: Beckett had specifically told him not to. And he's anxious about the dream he had a few hours ago. What the hell does it mean? Does he need a shrink? He hates shrinks.

 _They're in an interrogation room at the Twelfth, but he and Beckett are on opposite sides of the table._

 _"It's a class A felony," she says coldly. "You're looking at a very long stretch in prison."_

 _"For what?"_

 _"Don't play the innocent with me. You know very well for what."_

 _"I don't, I swear."_

 _"You met Kyra Blaine on your 'secret roof'." She makes air quotes around the last two words. "That's a no-fly zone, Castle. You're forbidden from going there. You're lucky it's not punishable by death."_

 _"But how, how did you even know about it?"_

 _"I have bat ears. Don't you know that by now? I'm Cat Woman with bat ears. A lethal combination. I heard you and Kyra talking. I can hear for a radius of 3.14159265359 miles."_

 _"Isn't that pi?"_

 _"Of course it's pi."_

 _"That's a long way." He closes his eyes for a moment, and when he opens them she's in a Cat Woman costume, skin-tight black leather from head to toe, but with enormous bat ears._

 _"Damn right it is." She meows and licks her hand. Her fingernails are long and painted bright red. "More than sixty blocks, and you and your little girlfriend—what is she, five two?—were only eighteen blocks from me. I knew that you'd do something stupid, and you did."_

That's all he can remember. He tried to hypnotize himself, but no luck. He has to go to the precinct and confess that he'd seen Kyra, but also to try to convince Beckett that Kyra can't possibly be a murderer. It's a tall order. It might take a lot more than a latte to do it.

The latte doesn't do it; evidence does. When his conscience moves him to tell her about the rooftop rendezvous, it's too late. She already knows because she'd had Kyra under surveillance. And while he's trying to explain himself and lay out his theory of the crime, financials come in on the victim, and everything changes. And just like that they're working together again as a perfect team. She's still pissed off at him, but it dissipates. After they wrap up the case, Kyra thanks him. He sees her stop by Beckett's desk for just a second, and say something. Beckett doesn't answer, and he can't see her face, but her body language tells him that she's happy. If only he had bat ears.

They leave the precinct together and she even lets him walk her to the subway. "Hey, Beckett!" he calls as she starts down the stairs.

She stops and turns around. "Yes?"

"Sweet dreams."

It must be a trick of the fading light, but it looks like she's blushing.

"You, too, Castle. Sweet dreams."

TBC

 **A/N** I thought a little sweetness was in order!


	5. Chapter 5

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

Spring had officially arrived in New York City at 1:32 p.m. on Saturday. At 5:30, it had begun to snow. By 7:00 it had been a white out. On Sunday, the first full day of spring, the snow had turned to cold, driving rain before dawn and hadn't stopped until late Monday afternoon.

Which is exactly when Kate Beckett had received an anonymous call from someone who had identified himself as a fan of hers and told her that he'd killed someone. So there had been no spring in her step, or Castle's, when they had seen the murder victim in a phone booth at Grand Central Station. Any joy they might have had about the lengthening of days and the (eventual) arrival of warmer weather had been shot to hell the next morning, when Lanie had summoned them to autopsy to show them the five slugs that she'd pulled from the victim's body. Each one had been hand marked with a letter, spelling NIKKI. "Nikki Heat," Beckett had said in horror. "That's why he called me. That's why he said he was a fan. He dedicated this murder to me."

She'd barely absorbed that information when her self-designated fan had called her again, and directed her to the Central Park carousel. The four slugs from the body there had been marked WILL. Nikki will… what?

The anonymous serial killer had called Beckett for a third time that night. They—along with a phalanx of FBI agents—had found shell casings and a trail of blood in a parking garage, but no body. The feebs had sent them all home, but Castle hadn't been able to sleep because of the guilt that was eating away at him. He had created Nikki Heat and—. The rest of the sentence had needed no voicing. He'd made up his mind to go to Beckett's, bearing with him a bottle of the Rolls-Royce of wine. It would be good for them to relax, to take their minds off this nightmare. He'd be charming, keep the air light, if only to keep his own terror at bay.

Then: boom. More like boom, boom, boom. First, he'd almost dropped the $300 bottle when Beckett had opened the door with a gun at her side. Second, she'd told him that she'd sent her security detail packing. Third—and this had been the most explosive boom in his head—she'd immediately shown herself to be jealous of Jordan Shaw, the FBI agent in charge of the case. Jealous! If he hadn't been so unnerved by the case, he'd have been inwardly dancing a jig, slapping himself on the back, mentally uncorking Champagne that cost five times more than the Châteauneuf-du-Pape that he'd brought (and that Beckett had refused to drink). She wanted him to be building theory with _her_ , not with Jordan. Jealous. Beckett was jealous. What a golden moment it would have been under other circumstances.

With no security detail outside her doorman-less building, he'd insisted on staying the night to keep watch. She'd insisted on abandoning him in her living room, and had gone to bed. Eventually the long day had caught up with him and he'd fallen asleep on her sofa.

 _The book is enormous, at least eight feel tall. It almost fills the room. On the cover, the silhouette of Nikki Heat begins to move, shifting sinuously until it becomes Beckett's silhouette. And then another silhouette—his—appears from the bottom right corner._

 _"_ _Give me the gun, Beckett," it—he—says._

 _"_ _No."_

 _He's walking towards her, and stops when he's only inches away. "Give it to me. I'll protect you."_

 _"_ _No, you won't. You put me in the crosshairs and you don't even know how to use a firearm. Go home, Castle." She's backing up as she's talking, disappearing onto the spine of the book. And then a gargantuan hand that dwarfs everything else moves in from the top right. It's menacing in a dark leather glove, and tears the gun away from her_.

 _"_ _You're next," says a disembodied voice that clearly belongs to the owner of the hand that's pressing the gun to her temple. Sinister, mocking, and deep, the voice sounds as though it's coming from a cistern. "Shall I shoot you, Detective? Or have your stupid boyfriend do it? Since this is all his doing. Hmm? What do you say?"_

He'd woken up wheezing and panicked. It had been a dream, hadn't it? Yes, yes, a dream. Nothing like the glorious ones he'd been having about Beckett in recent months, but a dream. One that was probably a hell of a lot closer to reality than his fantasies were. He'd gotten up and drunk three glasses of water to calm himself down, but his hands had been trembling so uncontrollably that he had spilled at least half a glass on himself. He'd tiptoed to her bedroom door and put his ear against it, hoping that he'd be able to hear her breathing. No dice. Still. "No one could have gotten in there without going by me, and they'd have shot me, right?" he'd whispered as he'd walked back to the living room. He'd checked his watch: 6:30. They'd gotten through the night.

Deep breaths, deep calming breaths had produced the desired effect. His mind had come up with something cheering. Breakfast! Pancakes! He'd been in the middle of cooking them when she'd appeared in her jammies, and he'd surreptitiously pinched himself to make sure that he was awake. His elation hadn't lasted: when he'd opened her front door to pick up her newspaper, a body had fallen in. The body of the woman who'd been murdered in the garage hours before.

It had taken all of his considerable skills to appear nonchalant. Fully alert but nonchalant enough not to lose it when Lanie had told them that the bullets from the third vic spelled BURN. NIKKI WILL BURN.

That night they thought they'd solved the case when they'd surrounded the killer, who had committed suicide rather than surrender. But something had gnawed on Castle, and at home, as he'd looked at the crime scene photos, he'd realized what it was. The man who'd taken his own life had shot himself with his right hand, but the killer was a lefty. Nikki will burn. Nikki will burn. Nikki will burn.

And she almost had. He'd raced to her apartment to warn her, and when he'd seen it blow up, the windows full of flames, he'd run faster than he ever had, and he'd gotten her out. He'd gotten her out.

That was two days ago. The case is done; Jordan Shaw and her crew have left town; and Beckett is now installed in his loft—reluctantly on her part, but not his. He hopes that she's sleeping soundly in the guest room because he's wide awake, still shot through with adrenaline. It's not yet dawn, but he's restless, and he's made a pot of coffee even though the better part of his brain tells him what an idiot he is for adding high-octane to the chemical mix in his veins.

Bless that squeaky step, which alerts him to the descent of someone on the stairs. He looks up.

"Castle?"

Not Alexis. He was sure it was Alexis. "Beckett! Why aren't you in bed?"

She doesn't answer; she has a question of her own as she comes to stand next to him. "What happened to my safe?"

"You're safe here, I promise."

"No, my safe. The safe in my apartment. Did it make it?"

Oh. Her safe. "I don't know. I'll call the CSU guys and ask, but it's a little early for that. Want some coffee?"

"I want my safe."

"Of course." Of course she does. The woman had lost virtually everything. She looks worried and heartbroken. There must have been something really precious to her in it.

"I'm going over there."

"No. Absolutely not. I'll go."

"It's my place, Castle."

"I understand. But please. Please let me do this for you. Let me spare you seeing that devastation again, all right?"

She looks at the kitchen floor for a while and then looks at him. "Okay, but I'm going with you. I can stand outside. If it's blown open, please can you get one of the CSU guys to pick up whatever's left and put it in a bag?"

"Sure." Any other time he would have asked her if it was her porn collection, but not today. Not with those eyes pleading with him. He talks her into having some coffee. Fortunately it's Saturday, and she has the weekend off. "Why don't I make us breakfast and then we can get dressed and go over. Okay?"

"Okay."

At 8:00 they meet the CSU guy, Steve London, at her (former) building. "Hi," she says, shaking his hand warmly. "Thanks so much. You remember Castle."

"I do. Good to see you again, Castle."

"Same here, London." He inclines his head a quarter of an inch, an unspoken thank you for London having let him take away Jim Beckett's watch when he'd found it on the floor after the bombing. He's having it fixed for Beckett, as a surprise.

"You're talking about your safe in your bedroom closet, right?" London asks.

"Yes."

"I'm ninety-nine percent sure it survived, though the blast might have busted one of the hinges. You want me to retrieve whatever's in it?"

"Yes, please. There's not much, besides my back-up piece, but it's my stuff. Means a lot to me."

"You two stay, I'll go get it. If the safe's intact, you want us to haul it out of here for you?"

"No, thanks. I don't want to see it ever again, just what's in there. I hope it's in there." She pauses. "Oh, you're gonna need the combination?"

London smiles. "I'll come back for it if I do. Don't want you to have to spill any secrets."

"Thanks."

Hmm. She'd tucked her hair behind her ear. That means she's embarrassed. The combination, must be. The curiosity is killing him. "London? Hold on." He pulls a leather duffel bag out of the shopping bag he's carrying. "I brought this for Beckett's stuff. Just in case."

"Okay." London says before stepping into the charred interior.

"Thanks, Castle," Becket says softly, leaning against the far wall in the hallway. "That was really thoughtful."

"You're welcome."

They're silent while they wait for London to return. When he does, he's carrying Castle's bag, which is now zipped shut. "Here you go, Beckett," he says, passing it to her. "I was right, it was damaged so I could get in it. Your gun, and a couple of other things. They were paper, so I'm surprised they made it. Want to check to see if I missed anything? You'll want to leave it all out in the open for a while, because of the smoke. Smells pretty awful, but it'll clear up eventually. Swipe what you can with a mixture of white vinegar and water, that'll help."

She peeks in the bag, "Everything's there. I can't thank you enough, seriously. I owe you one."

" 's on me, Beckett."

On the way back to the loft, Castle can feel her unwinding. When they get home, she goes upstairs with the bag and a few minutes later comes back down and gives it to him.

"It's not stinky, thank God. Guess my things weren't in there long enough to do any damage. Thanks."

"So, Beckett, now that that's off your mind, what do you say we do something just for the hell of it. Like a movie. Want to go to a movie?"

"It's not even ten o'clock yet," she says, on the borderline of appalled.

"Best time. The popcorn's fresh. Come on, it'll be fun."

"What do you want to see?"

"You're a big Tolstoy fan, right?" Of course she is. He doesn't need to ask her, but he wants to be Mr. Casual.

"Yeah."

"Movie about him just opened. _The Last Station_. Christopher Plummer as Tolstoy, Helen Mirren as his wife."

"Geez, Castle, I don't think that falls under your category of fun, but it sounds fantastic to me." She claps her hands together. "Let's do it. Guilty pleasure."

Guilty pleasure? Oh, if she only knew. Guilty pleasure is his going over his dreams of her—except the one from the other night. That one he's trying to purge from his memory. "Good. First show is at 10:40. I checked."

When she talks about the movie afterwards, he can't completely engage, but hopes that his enthusiasm is an adequate cover-up. Some of the plot had been lost on him. He'd been too aware of her warm thigh so close to his, and her fingers occasionally brushing against his in the bucket of popcorn.

He knows he can't crowd her, so he feigns having to write all afternoon, which is an easy way of giving her space. At breakfast the next morning she seems relaxed, so he dares to do a little teasing. "So, you going to tell me the combination to your safe?"

"And why would I do that?"

There she goes, pushing her hair behind her ear.

"Well, you don't need it anymore, and you looked a little flustered when you mentioned it to London."

"I was not flustered."

"Yes, you were. Lemme guess."

"You won't be able to guess."

"You need three numbers. I bet it's your measurements." He raises one eyebrow.

"Dream on, Castle. Dream on."

"I do." Oops. Please God, don't let her have noticed.

She gets up hurriedly from the kitchen stool and carries her plate and mug to the sink. "I'm going for a run," she blurts out.

"It's twenty-three degrees."

"Good. I won't get sweaty."

Oh, please, please get sweaty. "That reminds me," he says. "I'm going to do some laundry. You got anything to throw in there?"

"Not really. I don't have any clothes."

"Right, right. Sorry. I'm sorry."

She runs upstairs while he frets and loads the dishwasher.

"See ya," she says, loping past him in sneakers, leggings, and a hoody. "Might be a while."

"Right."

She's still gone when he's folding the laundry, and it reminds him to get some fresh towels for her bathroom. She hasn't been here long, but she works out, and clean, fluffy towels would be nice to come home to after a long run. He grabs some from the linen closet and goes up to her bathroom, where he sees that she has broken down and cleaned her gun, and laid it out on paper towels on top of the counter by the sink. She's also opened her passport and tilted it on the paper towels so that it can air out, and done the same with a notebook of some kind. He removes the towels that are on the bars and drops them into the hamper. But when he shakes out one of the clean towels so that it will hang neatly on the bar, it clips the notebook and sends it to the floor with a slap.

He bends over to pick it up and put it back where it had been, reopening it so that the pages are in the open air. That's when he sees it, just one sentence at the bottom of a page. It's immediately burned into his retina.

 _"_ _I wonder what it would feel like to have Castle suck chocolate off my nipple the way he did in that dream?"_

TBC

 **A/N** In case I don't have a chance to post a new chapter before Thursday, which is Thanksgiving in the U.S., I just want to say that I'm thankful for all of you.


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

He's sweating and his pulse is wild, even though he hasn't moved an inch. Is he having a heart attack? What cruel God would do that to him right after he had read that sentence? _"I wonder what it would feel like to have Castle suck chocolate off my nipple the way he did in that dream?"_ Propping himself up on the edge of the bathroom sink, he solemnly promises that he will work out more, cut down on junk food, get more fresh air, and try not to swear if only he can be granted at least one more day. No, a month. Would it be too much to ask for a few more decades?

All right, then. All right. His heartbeat is back to normal, the sweat has dried, and he's looking sideways at the notebook. "I hear your Siren song," he says accusingly. "I'm not touching you, got that? I'm not going to be lured to my death by looking inside. Not one page. Not one part of a page. Not even a sentence fragment. Nothing." He glances in the mirror, grateful that his brain is functioning properly. But holy fuck—sorry, God—Beckett has dreams about him? And she writes them down? Or was that a one-time thing? At least if it was, it was good. She must have liked it, right? If she wonders how reality would compare to her subconscious, she must have.

Calmness and rationality will rule as he dissects this one sentence of hers. He'll maintain a clinical detachment; he won't think about her nipple. So: Beckett had a dream about him, and it involved chocolate. Milk chocolate or dark chocolate? Not white, though, that nasty waxy stuff isn't even chocolate. It must have been chocolate sauce or syrup. What brand was it? Hershey's? Ghirardelli? Stonewall Kitchen? Fox's U-bet? Or maybe it was homemade? He makes a killer hot fudge sauce with a dash of vanilla. She loves vanilla! Would she like his hot fudge sauce? What if she licked it off his nipple? What if they took turns?

NO NIPPLE THINKING!

Uh-oh, how long has he been in here? What if she comes back right now? She could sneak up here in her sneakers and he wouldn't hear her until it was too late. Worse, she's a detective and never misses a detail. She'll see the clean towels and know that he's been in here. And if she knows that he's been in here she'll know that he's seen the notebook. Dream journal, whatever the hell it is. It's heaven, that's what is. Heaven. Think, think. Ah: he has to switch the towels. He yanks the fresh ones off the bar, opens the hamper and retrieves the ones he'd tossed in there a few minutes ago. He hangs them up again and prays that they're exactly as she left them. Please, please, please. He directs his invocation to Michael the Archangel, patron saint of the Police. Please don't let Beckett figure out that I was in her bathroom with her notebook. He gathers up the clean towels, and as he runs down the stairs, two at a time, he realizes how much praying he's been doing this morning.

She's not entirely sure where she is because she's been running blindly for more than an hour, trying not to think, trying to make her mind a perfect blank. After slowing to a jog and then to a walk, she takes in her surroundings. Okay, she's on the river, north of Battery Park. Way north: she can see the _Intrepid_ straight ahead, almost exactly where Sully Sullenberger landed that plane last winter. "Miracle on the Hudson," everyone called it. It was, too. She, Espo, and Ryan were freezing their butts off at a crime scene—a pimp's body had been dumped on the rocks—when the plane skittered over the water 100 yards away if them. It was a couple of months before Castle started at the Twelfth, which was too bad. He'd have loved it.

Shit, she's not supposed to be thinking about Castle. She raps her knuckles against her forehead, "Get out, get out, get out." But she's getting cold now, and she has to think about him, about it, some time, preferably before she gets back to the loft and sees him in the flesh. That's another thing to put on her taboo-thinking list: his flesh. She turns and heads east, away from the cold wind off the river. "What," she thinks as her left foot hits the pavement; "he," as her right foot lands; "said," as the left foot makes contact with the ground again. At breakfast she'd said, "Dream on," and he'd come back with, "I do." What's she worried about? It's just an expression. But she is worried. She's almost sure it was a slip of the tongue, that he was hiding something from her about his dreams. Everybody dreams, so what's the problem? The problem is that she'd seen the little change in his pupils, which always happens when he says something that might appear meaningless but is in fact riddled with meaning. Laced with it. Weighed down with it. Was he really saying that he dreams about her? Oh, God. Never mind, never mind, never mind. Ignore it. She's freezing and her muscles are tightening. She has to go back home. Not home. She doesn't have a home. Her worldly goods consist of her gun, her passport, and her Castle dreams notebook. An unholy trinity. She has to go to back to Castle's. Well, it's also Alexis's and Martha's. She's going to Alexis and Martha's. That's very reassuring. That's better. Too bad they're not there for the next week. It's Alexis's school break and she's gone to see her mother in L.A. while Martha visits old acting-school buddies there.

She keeps running, but doesn't manage to keep thoughts of Castle at bay.

He's only just gotten downstairs when he hears a key at the front door, so he dashes to the dryer and throws the neatly folded clean towels inside. He straightens up and smooths his hair. "Hi, Beckett."

"Hi, Castle," she says, unzipping her hoody and putting it on a hook by the front-hall closet before walking into the kitchen.

"Geez, your lips are blue. You must be freezing."

"I am. Gonna go take a shower. Warm up."

"'kay." It wasn't only her blue lips that gave her away, it was her nipples sharply outlined in her spandex running top. He really, really tried not to notice. He may have prayed a lot today, but he's not a saint. "You know," he calls up to her, "it's Sunday. All we had to eat before you went out was toast so I'm gonna make us some brunch."

"Thanks," she shouts from her room.

When she comes down a quarter of an hour later she's dressed in (regrettably) less revealing clothes. "Something smells good."

"Thanks," he says, waving a whisk. "Have a seat. I've almost finished the Hollandaise sauce for the eggs Benedict."

"Oh, yum. I love it."

"Here you are," he says a few moments later, passing her a full plate and putting another at his place opposite her.

"Don't suppose there's any coffee?"

"I can make some. I thought that since you were so cold you might like chocolate sauce instead."

"What?"

"Not sauce, not sauce! Don't know what I was thinking." Oh, but you do, you liar, he tells himself. "It would be totally crazy to drink chocolate sauce. I meant hot chocolate."

"Yeah, that would be nice." And it wouldn't be at all crazy to drink chocolate sauce right off your chest which I can plainly see part of because you insist on unbuttoning the top of your shirt even when it's cold, she does not say. But she thinks it, she most assuredly thinks it.

They survive brunch, somehow. "Thanks, Castle. Please let me clean up since you did the cooking."

"If you insist."

"I do." It takes only a few minutes to wash the pans, load everything else in the dishwasher, and wipe down the counters. "I'm going to go read, maybe take a nap since I haven't been sleeping well."

He's horrified. "I'm sorry. Do you need different pillows or sheets or anything? What about a different mattress? Softer? Firmer? Memory foam? Horsehair? I could order one and it would be here tomorrow."

"No, Castle, everything in the room is perfect. Really. It's just unsettling not to have a place of my own any more. I'm going to start looking online."

No! Don't do that! "You can stay here as long as you like, you know. You're very welcome." And if that mattress of yours really is a problem you can share mine, he's thinking.

"Thanks, but I need to start looking. I'll see you later."

What she reads, however, is not a book from Castle's extensive library, nor is it today's paper, nor online real-estate sites, nor one of the ten magazines he'd brought her. Her choice of reading material is her very own: her dream notebook. She'd gotten it from the bathroom, pleased to note that the smell of smoke is almost gone.

She hadn't intended to read it, truly. But having him sitting across from her while they ate, his knee occasionally bumping hers, and the combined delicious smells of eggs Benedict and him had been almost more than she could take. She'd come perilously close to crawling across the counter to get in his lap.

It's a good thing she hadn't looked at this earlier today or she really might have crawled over the counter. Reading about the dreams is very...very a lot of things. When she gets to the dream involving chocolate she nearly races down the stairs to rip his clothes off, for for a total dream re-enactment. When she realizes that her fingers are about to make their way inside her pants she sits up fast. Time to look at real-estate sites, for real. She has to get out of here.

Her search leads to a couple of possibilities, so she ticks them off. She's grateful that she had a few things to wear in her locker at the precinct, but she needs some more clothes, fast. Okay, off to see two apartments and then to shop, at least for enough things to get her through the work week that begins tomorrow.

"Castle?"

He peeks out from his office. "Oh. You're going out?" He looks disappointed; he is disappointed.

"Yeah," she says, buttoning her one remaining coat. "Gonna check out some apartments, shop for clothes, and meet Lanie for dinner. I'll see you later."

"Right. Well, good luck. I'll leave the porch light on for you."

God, he is so cute. "Thanks, Castle. I think I'll be fine."

He putters around all afternoon and evening, half-heartedly playing video games, eating dinner standing up, and finally stretching out on the sofa with a bag of Oreos. He successfully if painfully avoids the temptation of going upstairs to read her notebook. He really, really wants to know if it's only about her dreams, or something else? Has she dreamed about him more than once? Wait, wait, wait! That notebook had been in her safe, ergo she'd had the chocolate-nipple dream before her apartment had blown up. How long before? No, he is not going up there. That would be a total violation of privacy. Plus he'd almost been caught this morning when it hadn't even been his fault, not that she'd have believed him.

Castle likes to turn things over and over and over in his mind, which is both an occupational hazard and an occupational asset. He also has an excellent memory. And so it is that at 10:23 p.m. he remembers that the night they had closed the Kyra Case, which is what he privately calls the bridesmaid homicide, he had walked Beckett to the subway and had wished her sweet dreams. She'd said, "You, too, Castle. Sweet dreams." At the time he'd thought she might be blushing; now he's sure of it. That had been in the middle of January and it's now late March. Oh, yes. She's definitely been dreaming about him, and for a while, too.

He comes to this conclusion right before Beckett comes through the front door, and he has barely enough time to arrange his face.

"Any luck?" he asks, guiltily hoping that she'll say no.

"No." She drops two shopping bags on the floor. "Horrible, dark, and depressing."

"Looks like you had some retail therapy, though."

"Yeah. Got a few things before I met Lanie."

"Good." More than good. She probably won't have time to apartment hunt again until next weekend.

"Have a nice time?"

"Yeah, thanks. You have a good day?"

"I did. Just this and that."

"Good. Okay, night then." She picks up the bags. "See you in the morning."

He watches her ascend the stairs, admiring her. It's one of the only times that he can do so, confident that she doesn't know it. Even Beckett doesn't have eyes in the back of her head. "Night. Sleep well. You sure you don't need a more feathery pillow? Different mattress? Anything?"

She waves from the second floor. "No, all set, thanks."

After washing her face and brushing her teeth, she pulls a new sleep jersey from her bag. At least she doesn't have to go to bed in a ratty old NYPD tee shirt. She falls asleep almost as soon as her head hits the pillow that's as out of her price range as the jacket that she'd tried on this afternoon and reluctantly returned to its hanger. She wakes up in the middle of the night, though she has no idea why. Her mind goes back to her dream journal and the chocolate moment. It was funny that Castle offered her chocolate sauce instead of hot chocolate this morning, and now she has an almost insatiable craving for it. He has everything in that kitchen, everything in great variety, too, so surely he has chocolate sauce. Besides, he all but lives on ice cream. She pulls on a pair of socks and heads for the kitchen.

Fifteen years of single parenting have made Castle a light sleeper, at least when he's at home. He hears a noise, what sounds like a cabinet door opening and checks his phone: 3:07 a.m. What the hell? He pushes off the covers and goes to investigate. When he steps into the dark living room he can see clearly into the kitchen because one overhead light is on. It's his dream woman, wearing a short purple jersey that hits her well above the knee, leaving her legs exposed until almost her ankle, where the expanse of skin stops at the top of some fuzzy socks.

"Beckett?"

She startles, and drops a spoon, which skitters all the way across the floor. She'd involuntarily turned at his voice, and is looking right at him, holding in her right hand a squeeze bottle of Monin dark chocolate syrup. "Oh."

TBC

 **A/N** Hope you all have a great weekend.


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

"You're up," he says, both surprised and delighted. Much, much more than delighted. Ecstatic. Euphoric. Elated. And that's just a few of the E words. Floating on air. Giddy. Happy. Insanely happy. Her voice interrupts his alphabetic reverie.

"You, too," she says. He's almost naked. All he has on is boxers, and if he'd just drop them—are they silk? They look like silk. Of course they're silk. They're Castle's. They must be soft against his skin. The skin that's under them. Especially the soft skin of—. Eyes up, Kate. Eyes up. Done, done. Except now she's looking at his nipples. Eyes up, Kate. Eyes farther up. Done, done. His mouth is moving but she can't hear anything. She shakes her head and the elastic that was holding her hair in a ponytail comes loose and flies into the sink. "Sorry, what?"

"I said, are you eating chocolate sauce?"

She looks inanely at the bottle in her hand, squints at it, and tries to read the label, which for some reason seems blurry. She looks harder. "No. No. This is, uh, chocolate syrup. Not sauce. That's what it says." She holds it up in his direction. "See? Syrup?"

He leans forward to check. "So it is. Dark chocolate syrup. You chose dark."

"Oh, right. I did?" She reads the bottle again. "Maybe because it's dark outside?"

"Wait, don't eat that." He makes the request as he stretches out his hand.

"Is it past its sell-by date?" She looks in confusion at the stamp on the bottle neck. BEST BY FEB 11 2011. "No, that's not 'til next year. But I can't eat it? You don't want me to eat it?"

"Nope." He takes the Monin away from her and returns it to the counter. "Sit down over there on the stool, please."

"How come?" She doesn't want to sit over there. It's too far away from him.

"Please, just sit. I promise I'll make it worth your while."

"Okay." She walks around the end of the island and sits. Oh, this is much better! Now he's hidden from the waist down so he looks totally naked. Definitely worth her while. Was that what he meant? What did he mean? "But I really do want some chocolate sauce, Castle. Syrup. Either."

"All by itself?" What was she going to do with it? Don't go there, don't think about it, don't visualize. "You don't want anything with it?"

Yeah, you. I want you with it. Under it. "No. I don't know. I hadn't thought that far. Past the the sauce. I just wanted some chocolate sauce. Want it."

Wow, she's flustered. Kind of spacey and flustered at the same time. It's very delectably unBeckettlike, and cute. "How about ice cream? A traditional underpinning for chocolate sauce. Or syrup."

"Sure. Good." Although another underpinning would be better. And unlike ice cream, which is very cold, this underpinning would be very hot. Is very hot.

Castle pivots to a cabinet and takes out a couple of things before opening the refrigerator to get some butter. She's staring at his back. God, it's wide. How did she not know that it was that wide, and that it tapered like that? And smooth! There are a couple of freckles, but that's it. That's it except the muscles. God almighty, he could—. Never mind what he could. "Whatcha doin', Castle?"

"Making hot fudge sauce," he says, fetching a small pan from a drawer next to the stove.

"But I saw some." Why is her hair all loose? Where is her elastic band? "I saw a whole lot of different chocolate sauces on the shelf. You have a bunch in there. "

"Yeah, I do, but none of them is as good as mine."

"Then why do you have them?"

"Because I don't always have time to make it."

"But you have time now?"

"I have time for anything for you, Beckett." He stops for a moment, as if he's trying to remember something, and when he speaks again his voice and his expression are so soft. "All the time in the world."

In her befuddled state she's unprepared for that. It brings her up short and makes her shy, so she defaults to silence and staring at her lap. When she hears a faint chopping sound she looks up. Castle is reducing two blocks of unsweetened chocolate to small bits. He deftly tips them into the pan, pours in some water, turns on the gas, and stirs until the chocolate has melted. He begins adding sugar, stirring the entire time, then mixes in several pieces of butter and a very large splash of vanilla. She's never smelled anything this good in her life.

"Want a taste?" he asks, offering up a wooden spoon that's cradling a bit of satiny hot fudge sauce.

"Oh, God, yes, please." She licks the spoon, then her lips, and shakes her head again. "Forget it. Never mind."

"You don't like it?" She might as well have stabbed him in the heart with a chocolate-covered paring knife.

"No! Not that. I meant forget the ice cream. Don't need it. I just want to eat this hot fudge right out of the pan."

"That's more like it," he says, dropping a potholder in front of her and resting the pan on top of it. "Dig in."

She does. Soon she's making little noises that he's never heard emanating from any human. Maybe she's a divinity. She looks like one, with that seraphic expression. Except the sound? The sound is not at all angelic. An otherworldly moan brings the hair on his arms to attention.

Her eyes are closed and her face is radiant. "Ohhhhhhhh. I'm having a mouthgasm."

"Well, that's a start."

What did she say?

What did he say?

They freeze. Holy shit, he needs to do something before she runs from the room. "Um, hang on. I have something better."

" _Better?_ "

There's a drop of hot fudge on her chin, just sitting there, glistening, tempting him. He has to think of something, right now, and not look at her. Aha, got it. He turns around, yanks open a cabinet door, grabs something from the top shelf, and wheels back to her, clutching a yellow box. "It's 'Nilla wafers," he says needlessly, thrusting the box at her.

She jumps as if she's just put a wet hand in a toaster. "'Nilla wafers?"

"Yes. They're fantastic dipped in hot fudge sauce, that's what you told me."

"What?"

"You said they were your favorite."

She's off the stool and yelling. "In my dream!"

What does she mean, her dream? The chocolate-coated-nipple dream? Nooooo. "No, you told me that in the break room once, remember?"

"No!"

"Yes. It was really late one night and the vending machine was out of Oreos. And Nutter Butters. You don't remember that? And then you, Espo, Ryan, and I started talking about what our favorite cookie was because we were jonesing for something sweet."

Her hand is clutching the front of her jersey, which hikes it up a couple of inches, which makes him nervous. "We did?"

"Yeah. Can't believe you don't remember." Can't believe how short that shirt of hers is now, either.

Quite unaccountably, at least to him, Beckett begins to laugh, laugh so hard that eventually she has to lean against the refrigerator to keep from toppling over. "Sandies," she gasps. Thank God. She'd told him. It hadn't been just in her dream. It's okay then.

"What?"

"Sandies. That's the cookie that Ryan loves, so Espo told him he was a wuss."

"He is a little bit of a wuss."

"No, he's not. He's sweet."

"Sweet as my hot fudge sauce?"

She's safe, it's safe. She lets go of her shirt, pushes off from the fridge, and goes back to the counter. "Lemme see," she says, fishing a 'Nilla wafer from the box, dipping it in the saucepan and taking a bite. "Nothing. Absolutely nothing's sweeter than this."

She takes another bite, and this time moans even more seductively than she had when she'd been eating the hot fudge with a spoon.

"Beckett?"

She opens her eyes. "Yes?"

"I can't believe I'm asking you this, but please don't eat any more."

She's just about to dunk another wafer. "Why? It's sensational. You made it for me." Uh-oh, was that too much? "It's so good, I mean. Why aren't you having any? Here."

Now she's pressed the cookie into his hand and gotten another from the box for herself. He knows exactly what's coming next and he has to stop her. "It's the noise you're making."

"What noise? I'm making noise?"

"It's, you know, vocalization," he says, sounding like a desperate man.

"Like singing? I'm just eating, Castle. You basically told me to eat this. I'm not singing." She dredges the wafer through the chocolate, pops it in her mouth, and moans again.

"That! Right there! You're driving me crazy. It's er—." He swallows hard, and his eyes look a little wild.

"Er? Er? Oh, my God, you were going to say erotic, weren't you. I'm making an erotic sound?" Her eyes look a little wild, too.

"Yes. Very. And what with you here in nothing but a little shirt, it's uh. It's distracting."

"You should talk, standing there in the middle of winter in nothing but your shorts."

Can she see him breathing? He doesn't have a shirt on. He'd forgotten to put on a shirt. She must be able to tell that he's almost panting. "You have chocolate on your chin. Not really your chin, just below your lip." She's just standing there. She's not doing anything about the chocolate. Still standing there, staring at him. How long has it been? He swears his brain is ticking. It might be about to detonate. Finally he points to the spot on her fact where the alluring bit of hot fudge is resting. "There. It's right there." Jesus, she's still standing there, staring. The ticking is louder. And louder. His head will explode all over the kitchen. "There." Still nothing.

His left index finger is making its shaky way to her chin. It presses tentatively, and moves over the chocolate.

She moves like a tiger, or an eagle, or whatever creature has the fastest swooping time, and circles his wrist with her right hand. She has a grip like some animal, too, it's amazing. And then? Then his finger is somehow inside her mouth and she's sucking on it.

TBC


	8. Chapter 8

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

"Mmmm," Beckett says, releasing his finger and smacking her lips. "This is even more delicious on top of skin." She nods her head towards the wall of cabinets. "So, Castle, you got a fondue set? Something that would keep this hot fudge sauce warm? You like fondue, right?"

The owner of the recently sucked-clean finger makes a strangled sound but eventually manages a just-decipherable, "Yes. I do. Fondue."

"You have a banana? How about dipping a banana, Castle? That would be good, wouldn't it? Although," she takes a step closer to him, "now that I've had a taste for hot fudge and skin, maybe I don't need the banana." She reaches out to the pan and runs a finger through the chocolate. "You don't mind, do you?" She leans forward, her expression that of a masterly painter approaching a fresh, taut canvas, and draws a circle of hot fudge on top of the areola that surrounds Castle's left nipple. Tipping her head back, she scrutinizes her work and then dabs a bit of the chocolate on the nipple itself. "Perfect."

He's agog. He also wonders if he's asleep. Is he in the thrall of Morpheus, dreaming all this, or not? "Am I awake?" he asks out loud.

"Oh, definitely." She bounces on her toes. "Your nipple is, anyway, look at it standing at attention like that."

He doesn't need to look but he does. He's looking at her looking at her at it. If he's dreaming, it doesn't matter what he does now, right? If he's awake—well, she started it, didn't she? Also right. Holy shit, now she's licking her finger.

If she were thinking rationally, she wouldn't be doing this. If she were thinking rationally, she'd store the extra sauce in the fridge; set the pan in the sink to soak; return the 'Nilla wafers to the cabinet; say good night to Castle, and go back to bed. But she's not thinking rationally. Or maybe she is, after all. What does she have to lose? Nothing. She lost virtually everything except her life when her apartment blew up. She could have lost her mind over that, too, but she hadn't. For one thing, she was too busy being in cop mode, working on the case. For another, ever since the death of her mother she's tried to put less importance on possessions. Everything inanimate, almost everything, can be replaced or rebuilt. Re- something. But what about the animate? What about her life? What about the six-foot-two, blue-eyed, highly animate man who's standing right in front of her? The more time she spends with him, the more she never, ever wants to replace him, or have him replace her. Go ahead, she thinks. Take the chance, make the leap, do it, go for it, what the hell. She steps even closer, looks straight into his eyes, then looks down, and very slowly, very thoroughly, very sensually licks the chocolate off him.

Richard Castle is not an athlete, but he is an astonishingly strong man. He weight trains at least three times a week and could probably lift the front of his Ferrari off the ground without breaking a sweat. But he's breaking a sweat now, and all he's doing is standing in his kitchen where the woman of his dreams (and more) just licked his nipple for a long, but nowhere near long enough, time. His legs are so powerful that you could crack open clams on his quads or macadamias on his gastrocnemii, yet they're about to give way. "Ohhh," he says in a voice that feels as weak as his knees.

"Do you know how long I've dreamed of doing that?" Beckett asks.

For whatever reason, her question snaps him out of his fog. His mind is suddenly, inexplicably, and completely clear. It must have been the verb. Dream. Dreamed. And she asked it almost dreamily. "Dreamed?" he says, answering her question with one of his own.

"Yeah."

"Literally or figuratively?"

"What?"

"Did you really dream of that? Exactly that?" The air is electric, fizzing and popping like storm-downed wires on a two-lane blacktop, but it's also strangely still, as if two different masses of air have met and stopped just short of colliding, and he's occupying the space in between them, an emotion-free interstice. "You know, is that a figure or speech or did you have a dream about this? About what you did."

She looks as befogged as he had felt not long before. "Why?"

He's calm; his voice is measured and kind, even though his body is still in an uproar. He's trying to keep them separate for the moment. "Well, you're a detective, so truth is really important to you. Facts. I'm a writer who sits on the not-so-fine line between fiction and non-fiction a lot of the time. That's one of the reasons we're such good partners. You're the practical one, I'm the—not impractical. What would you call it? Fanciful? Fanciful one?" Her eyes are big, and in the lowish light look browner than usual. Chocolatey. God, he wants to kiss her. He instructs himself to stay focussed, to get her to tell him about dreaming.

"Fanciful?"

"I'm a dreamer, Beckett. Literally and figuratively. I like being inside other people's heads. Maybe I should have been a shrink. But then I never would have met you." He smiles in what he hopes is a very encouraging way.

Her insides feel like chocolate and she's making an enormous effort to concentrate. She moves her jaw back and forth, as if that might send her brain a signal. She shuts her eyes and opens them again. She's in Castle's kitchen, with Castle, who's so sweetly earnest, and she finally receives his message about dreaming, finally understands his question to her. Woman up, she tells herself. You went for it before, went for his nipple, for God's sake, so go for it again. Not his nipple, don't go for that right now. Go for the truth. "I did. Yes. I did."

"You did?" He raises his eyebrows and waits a few seconds. "You did—" he rotates his hand, the universal sign that she should keep going.

"Dream." She blurts it out. "I really did dream it." Oh, there's no going back now. "Only there was more. I dreamed that I licked chocolate off, uh, off. Off you. And you licked it off, you know. Um, me."

"I did? Licked? I licked it off you? Really?"

"More like sucked. You sucked. I don't mean you sucked. No, wait. I mean you did suck, but suck in the good way. You sucked hot fudge off me and it was fantastic. In my dream." Youadmittedittohimareyououtofyourfuckingmind? She covers her face with her hands.

Very gently he wraps his hands around hers and pulls them away from her face. "Hey," he says. "May I try?"

It's hard to look him in the eye, but she forces herself. "Try?"

"Try what I did in your dream. The hot fudge is right behind you."

Her face is scarlet, but hell, yes. "Yes."

He stretches his arm around her, dips his finger into the sauce—which fortunately is still warm—and holds up his hand. It's the same finger that had been in her mouth, the one that she had sucked-licked. "And it was where? Where was it, the chocolate? Right where you put it on me?"

She's trembling, but she nods.

"May I lift you up?"

"Up?"

"Put you on the counter? It's a good place for—. You'd be at just the perfect height there."

Another nod.

He's shocked by how light she feels. They're head-to-head now, and he takes the hem of her sleep shirt in one hand. "Is it all right if I lift this up, too?"

Another nod.

He's just begun to lift it when she yanks the shirt over her head and lets it fall to the floor.

And there they are, her perfect breasts. He wants to say something about her nipples being at attention, too, but he can't form words. He has just enough functioning brain cells to realize that the hot fudge on his finger is cooling rapidly, so he quickly coats her left nipple with it and then takes her breast in his mouth, and sucks, licks, nibbles, and finally devours until there is no longer even a memory of chocolate there. Even now he knows that the memory he just acquired is better than any chocolate on earth, and it gets even better when he lets go and she draws his head back to her.

"The other one," she insists, her breath unsteady. "God, Castle, do the other one, too."

He welcomes the invitation, and takes full advantage of it. He could feast like this forever, even without chocolate, but there's something else he has to do, so he stops. She must have read his mind, because just as he reaches for her face she reaches for his, and a briefly awkward kiss—his nose collides with her chin—turns into something perfect.

The sensation of his mouth on her breast had almost sent her to some other dimension, but his mouth on her mouth is every bit as staggering. The hot, wet slide of his tongue over hers, the pulse of it, the dips and darts, the long, luxuriating strokes. He moves to her neck, and his lips find the spot just behind her ear that makes her all but topple off the counter onto him, especially when he runs his thumb over her very sensitive nipple. "Did you dream about this?" he whispers.

"I can't remember." She giggles.

Beckett giggles!

"You can't?" He nuzzles that spot again.

"I'd have to go upstairs and check."

His response tumbles over hers. "Check?" He's desperate to take it back, but he can't, and he feels her freeze in his arms.

TBC

 **A/N** A big thank you to Roadrunnerz for suggesting that Beckett and Castle have fondue.


	9. Chapter 9

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

 **A/N** I usually update quickly, but life demanded everything I had for the past two weeks and I couldn't write. I apologize for the delay.

He can't believe that anyone can move that quickly. She disappears from his embrace faster than an ice cube on a hot stove, and races up the stairs like a cheetah chasing a pronghorn antelope. Why does he keep thinking of her in terms of animals? A few minutes ago he had mentally compared her to an eagle and a tiger. Maybe it's because she arouses his animal instincts. Must be. And who's to blame for that? When she left the kitchen a few moments ago the only thing she had on was a pair of petal-pink bikinis. A slightly paler pink than her nipples. Oh, and fuzzy socks. She was wearing socks. He'd have forgotten them except for the sensory memory of her foot softly grazing his thigh when she was sitting on the counter.

Her door slams shut. Uh-oh. This is not good.

His brain has caught up with the rest of his body and he's desperately trying to decide what to do. Should he go after her or stay down here? The former, definitely; they've made too much progress for the latter. Go after her but wait outside the door? Go after her and knock on the door? Call her name? Call her Beckett or call her Kate? Kate seems appropriate, considering what they'd just been doing in the kitchen. But if he calls her Kate will it spook her and make her refuse to come out? Or worse, it might compel her to leave by the window and somehow crawl to the roof and escape to another building, which he's pretty sure she's capable of doing.

Despite his cautious, sensible deliberations, his right hand and his mouth decide to act without his brain having given them permission. He finds himself almost leaning against her door, his knuckles tapping softly on the wood.

"Beckett?" No sound.

"Kate?" Still nothing.

He's suddenly aware that he's holding something in his left hand, and he looks at it. "I brought your shirt. Nightgown. Shirt." He's wincing uncomfortably now. "Would you be more comfortable wearing it?" Jesus, what a question. "I could pass it in to you if you open the door a little bit." He presses the shirt to his face; it smells so deliciously of her.

You idiot, he thinks, she has other clothes in there; she brought home two shopping bags of new things yesterday. Why would she need this? She's probably covered every inch of her skin from chin to toe by now. Swaddled in a turtleneck. Buttoned into pants. He's moving from one bare foot to the other, feeling a little chilly in his boxers now that there's no melted chocolate on him—and worse, Beckett's tongue no longer on him. He shivers happily at that recollection. But it's too quiet in there. Surely she must be doing something. She'd looked horrified when she'd broken away from him, and he's concerned. He knocks again, harder. Not a peep. Not a rustle.

"Beckett? May I come in?"

How could she not answer that direct question? How about if he yelled "NYPD!"?

"Are you all right?" He clears his throat. "I'm worried about you."

Protracted silence.

"I'm going to come in, okay? I'm coming in."

He turns the doorknob excruciatingly slowly, but rattling it so that she's sure to hear it. The reading lamp on her nightstand is on, and supplies just enough light for him to see her standing in the middle of the room, her (bare) back to him. Wow, she hasn't put on any clothes after all. Her arms are in front of her, as if she's holding something.

"Beckett?"

Should he touch her? He's still deliberating when she turns her head to the left; it's not much, but he can see part of her face and knows that she can see his.

"I checked," she whispers.

"You did?"

"Yes." She turns away again so her face is no longer visible. When she dips her head, he almost misses what she says next. "I didn't need to. I did dream about it and I remember all of it. "

She fessed up! She told him! Is this how a priest feels in the confessional? Except that he, unlike a priest, has no intention of asking her to do any penance. Quite the contrary. "You did? About me—. About you—. About—" He's sure that no priest is ever this tongue-tied. "Uh, with the chocolate. You dreamed about what we did?"

"In here."

Now she's lost him. In here? But she'd never even been up here until a couple of days ago, and her dream predates that, so that can't be it, can it? "We did that in this room? In your dream?"

"No. In my dream it was somewhere else. I mean that I wrote it down. In here. In my notebook."

Music to his ears, heavenly music. He assumes that priests also have at least a passing acquaintance with angels, and if they hear anything like what he's hearing, maybe he should start going to church. Cherubim, seraphim, thrones, virtues, archangels. Gabriel with his trumpet, every choir there is, all at once, in perfect harmony. Perfect harmony is what he wants to have with Kate. Totally possible, so long as he doesn't screw up.

"You have a notebook for your dreams?" He hasn't moved since he entered the room, but he takes one step forward. "Do you write down all of them?"

She doesn't say a word. He could have read _The Lord of the Rings_ , or at least the first volume, while he waited for her to speak. And when she turns around he knows he'd have waited a year, without food or water, for this.

Her arms are crossed over her chest, and the notebook is in her right hand. She shakes her head and her hair brushes the side of her jaw. "No. Just yours. I only write down the dreams that I have about you."

"So, more than one? Not just the chocolate one?" How can his voice be so high? He sounds like a ten-year-old instead of a grown man, a grown man whose self-control is very, very, very frayed.

She nods.

"Is the chocolate one the best?"

The light may be 40-watt, but he can see her face get pink, pinker than her panties. "Others." This time she clears her throat. "Some of the other dreams are, you know, too."

"Did we downstairs? Was the kitchen?" Get hold of yourself, man. Although what he'd really like is for her to get hold of him. "Which was better, real life a few minutes ago, or the dream? With the chocolate." Just say it! "That we licked and sucked off each other's nipples." There. He said it and she hasn't left the room. Her fuzzy-socked feet are right where they have been.

Her face changes. The moment he finishes she softens and smiles. Grins, really. She looks confident and sexy as she drops her arms, but not the notebook. "I don't know what your dreams are like, but I'd bet they're at least as richly detailed as your books." Her tongue appears briefly at the corner of her mouth. "Some of mine are pretty incredible." She takes a long stride towards him. "But my chocolate one? No contest." She takes one more step and is so close to him that their chocolate-less nipples are almost touching. "Real life was so, so much better. Hotter."

"Hotter, huh?"

"Much hotter. A hundred degrees hotter."

Her hot breath is caressing his neck, wrapping around it like steam. "You measured?"

"Didn't need to. My body knows, Castle." She looks down and runs her hand across the front of his boxers. "Looks like yours does, too." His knees come so close to buckling that he grabs hold of her arms to prevent himself from collapsing. And then he moves his hands up to frame her face and kisses her more passionately than he's ever kissed anyone.

And then she surprises him, and herself, by kissing him more tenderly than she's ever kissed anyone.

They're still standing in the middle of the room, and her lips are at his ear. "Do you ever dream about me, Castle?"

"All the time."

"You dream about you and me and chocolate?"

He laughs. "Had a hell of a one about you and me and coffee."

"Yeah?" She pulls him by the hand, hard, and they topple onto the bed. He lands on his back, and she rolls over to lie flat atop his chest. One hand supports her chin; the other plays with his hair. "Tell me."

"It was the middle of the night." God, her eyes are beautiful at this angle, and this close. "We were the only people at the precinct. Not a soul was there but the two of us."

"No mice?"

"Do mice have souls?"

"Of course."

"Anyway, we were exhausted and frustrated, trying to pick apart a case and getting nowhere. I wanted to leave but you said we should keep at it, so we did. And then I went to the men's room and when I came back you were in the break room, having a meltdown."

"I don't have meltdowns."

"This is my dream, remember?"

"All right, but I object." Don't object to his skin, though. He has the silkiest skin she's ever felt. It's baby soft, but the musculature that it's stretched across is something else. Definitely unbabylike. It's massive. Sexy and massive. Not the only thing about him that's massive, either. She's trying to pay attention to his dream story, but it's hard to concentrate and she's lost the thread. "Sorry, what?"

"I said, you kicked the coffee machine."

"Why?"

"Because it was out of coffee. You were screaming, 'There is no fucking coffee. How the fuck am I supposed to work if there's no fucking coffee?' I said there had to be an all-night diner in the neighborhood and you said all that coffee was horrible and you could no longer drink it which was my fault for spoiling you by getting the millionaire coffee machine and the billionaire beans. Your exact words. And then you kicked the refrigerator, to punish it for not having any coffee beans. You kicked it after each word. 'No.' Kick. 'Fucking.' Kick. 'Coffee.' Kick. And I swear to God, you grabbed me by the front of my shirt and pushed me against the door and said, 'Good thing there's still fucking.' You were so gorgeous and so sexy I couldn't believe it."

"Castle!"

"What?"

"That is such a guy dream."

"In my defense, I'm a guy."

She slithers up his body until her lips are on his and she asks, into his mouth, "And was there?"

"Was there what?"

"Fucking."

TBC


	10. Chapter 10

**Disclaimer:** The only part of _Castle_ that I own is the TV on which I watch the show.

 **A/N** This chapter spends some time in M territory. If you'd rather not read that part, you can stop after the sixth paragraph ("You did") and resume with the paragraph that begins "She recovers her voice first."

Maybe he shouldn't have asked, "Was there what?" Maybe he should have known what she was talking about. Maybe part of him did know, but wanted to hear her say it. And maybe part of him also wanted to see her expression when she said it.

"Fucking."

Ordinarily he wouldn't describe that word as lyrical, but here and now? From her? It's poetry. It's Shakespeare. It's Shelley, it's Browning, it's Donne. His response will not be lyrical, but it will be direct.

"You bet there was fucking. Up against the wall of the break room. Break being the operative word, too, since you nearly broke me."

"I did, huh?"

"You did."

"Did I do this?" While she's asking, and looking right into his eyes, she takes hold of the waistband of his boxers, pulls them down, and wraps her fingers around him.

God, she has long fingers. Oh, God, also very nimble. Very nimble, long fingers. Nimble and long and knowing. How does she know just how? He doesn't want to know.

"And this?"

She's very, very lightly tickling his balls—

"How about this?"

Before he really registers that she has slid halfway down his body, he twitches at her touch. Holy shit, her tongue on his nipple was a kindergarten move compared to this. Her tongue is warm and wet, and she's using it to put pressure hard and flat against the very tip of—and then he loses track because her lips have come into play along with her tongue and her fingers. Is levitation possible? He's about to levitate to the ceiling and crash right into it. She's killing him, and if he dies here it's fine with him, because he dies an ecstatic death. Wait, wait, wait. Where did she go? He opens his eyes: she's looking up at him from between his thighs, her hands regrettably now on her hips. Put them back, put them back, put them back.

"Shouldn't we be standing?" she asks.

"Standing?" Even in his state he can hear that his voice is at best a croak.

"Up against the wall. If you want to reenact the dream. Except for the part about being in the precinct. I have to draw the line somewhere." Her fingernail sketches a line straight down his belly and he twitches again. "You do want to reenact it, don't you, Castle? But you're gonna have to tell me." She flicks her tongue out. "Show and tell me."

"I love show and tell."

She's reaching for his hand. "Up and at 'em," she says.

" 'm already up."

"Yeah, Castle, I know. I'm impressed." More than impressed, way, way more. Stunned, staggered, reeling, excited to the point of almost uncontainable, but she's trying to be cool. Teasingly cool. She wants to extend this moment until they simultaneously combust. "I said _stand_ up." She tugs on his hand and manages to bring him to his feet.

What she hadn't counted on was losing her own footing. Not literally: she hasn't tripped or fallen. But she and Castle are almost toe-to-toe now, with nothing in between them but pheromone-laced air and his spectacular erection. As she looks down, she feels wobbly. There's no way she can stand. Oh, oh, oh, what's she thinking? Her brain seems to be slipping a little. It doesn't matter that she's too Jell-O-kneed to stand because he'll do the standing and she'll put her legs around his waist. His legs can take it. Jesus, those muscles in his legs. It'll be fine unless she collapses first. Maybe it's because she's been through a self-imposed sexual dry spell lately. She's not dry now, anything but dry. No, it's him. Definitely him. He's done this to her. She grabs on to both his forearms. "Pick me up, please. Please, please."

While she's losing her senses he's regaining his.

"No need to ask twice," he says, gathering her up in one easy move. Her legs are gripping so tightly around him that he can barely walk, but he makes it to the wall, kissing her the entire time. She's plastered against him; he can feel how hot and wet she is, feel every beat of her heart against his chest.

"Were we like this?" she gasps against his neck.

"Yes."

"Exactly like this?"

He's gasping, too. "No panties. You weren't wearing any."

She's trying to yank hers off, but she's pressed so hard against both the wall and him that she can't do it.

With an agility he didn't know he had—although he's never been this motivated—he takes them off her without dropping her or wounding either one of them. But she's so slick against him now that he needs to steady them, and cradles her butt with one hand. That's better, better, it's heaven. Okay, they're steady now, but as he moves his hand away she circles his wrist.

"Ride it, I want to ride it, Castle," her cheekbone against his ear.

The touch and feel, the smell and taste of her are so overwhelming that he's hardly aware of curling one, then two fingers inside her before she explodes around him. He holds her fast while she shudders and tries to catch her breath.

"Jesus, Castle, what did you do?" she says at last.

What? What did he do? "Did I hurt you? I'm sorry, I'm sorry."

She feebly swats his chest. "No, no, how did you make me come so fast? You have witchy powers."

"Warlock. Warlocky powers."

"Whatever. I've never, ever. God. Ever." She kisses him again, her hair almost as damp as her skin. "Take me to bed?"

"Yes. I'll take you in bed, too." A minute later, they're both rolling on the duvet, and she's giggling. It's the second time tonight she's done that, and it's one of the best things he's ever heard.

"Your hand's not what I'm riding this time," she says, as she flips him onto his back.

This. This. This she has dreamed of, more than once. More times than she's counted, though if she went through her notebook she could get the actual number. She doesn't need to go through it to remind herself of what it was like to see light play in his blue-blue-blue eyes, to recall the sensation of him cupping her breasts or the elation of him smiling up at her. In her dreams, it's just the two of them in their private universe. She's ready for the reality of it now, more than ready, and she lowers herself onto him, painstakingly slowly. It is truly a little painful at first, because she's never been with a man this big, but her body stretches to take him in.

Neither one of them says a word, but almost immediately they find a rhythm as if they're two jazz musicians who have been together for years, each anticipating the other's moves, playing off and with them, riffing, teasing, switching leads back and forth, still surprising each other. Then, as with most great jazz, things heat up, the sounds not of saxophone and bass but of skin slapping against skin, susurrations and yelps, sighs and moans. She's no longer on top, and he's driving into her as she tries to pull him impossibly closer. And then she tightens around him, both inside and out, her control gone.

He thinks she has never been more beautiful than she is at that moment, and he forces himself to stop just to look at her. But he has only so much self-control, too, and he follows her into what the infinitesimal portion of his brain that can think in these circumstances is already calling Orgasm Eden.

She recovers her voice first. "That can't have been like your dream, Castle."

"Why not?" he says from flat on his back, as he draws her into his side.

"If that's the nearly broken you, I can't imagine what the unbroken version is like."

His chest is still heaving, and he waits a few moments before replying. "That so surpassed my dream. Seriously. You're unbelievable. I think I've been waiting for you for decades without knowing it."

"Me, too. Aren't you glad we didn't go to the precinct for a reenactment? 'cause you know Ryan or Espo would have caught us. Plus there's no bed. This is a hell of a bed."

"Yeah, wait 'til you try mine."

"Let's go."

"Not ready yet. Gotta regroup for a minute." He hears another giggle as he closes his eyes.

A minute turns into several as he dozes, one arm around her. As she watches him, she senses that everything about her, not just her body, has stretched. Everything has expanded. Her life. Her expectations. Her ideas. Her future. Him. And they're in bed and everything she's always thought about sex and fun and love—though for now she uses that last word only in her head—has changed. She's starting to get cold, and when she moves to pull the covers over her, he wakes up.

"Hi."

"Hi." She's surprised that she doesn't feel shy. "Castle?"

"Mmm hmm?"

She rolls on top of him again. "What was the first time you dreamed about me?"

"A year ago. March. During our second case. It was very explicit, but nowhere near as good as this. I was such a jerk then. When I saw you the next morning at the precinct I practically had to go take a cold shower. I must have looked like I just got laid, since in my unconscious I had, and there you were, the layer-layee, right in front of me."

She snorts into his chest. "Layer-layee? Geez, so romantic."

"Told you I was a jerk then." Her hair is long enough now that he can tuck it behind her ear. It's one of so many intimate gestures that he's been aching to make, and now he can. "What about you? When did you start dreaming about me?"

"Took me a little longer. May fifth, last year. The child-abduction case when you wore a wire. I dreamed we were making out when we were on a stakeout in some disgusting alley. We didn't have sex, but pretty close."

"May fifth, huh? That's precise."

"Told ya. I have a notebook."

That will be a conversation for the future, not now. "When's the first time you really, really wanted to kiss me, Beckett?"

"Really wanted to? That was a lot later. This past October, after the awful summer when I was so furious at you." She buries her nose in the hollow between his collarbones. "It was when you didn't take the James Bond book contract. But the most important time? That was right after new year's when when you gave a hundred thousand dollars, just like that, to try to catch my mother's killer. It was—." She shakes her head. "That you would do that for me, for nothing."

"Not for nothing, Kate." He swallows hard. He's going to risk it, has to risk it, after this. "You're everything."

She doesn't move, so at least she's not on the run. Finally she lifts her head up and kisses him. "I'm beginning to know," she says, running a finger around his ear, "that you're everything, too."

He kisses her back. "So, dreams, huh?"

"Yeah. Amazing."

"But this is a million times better, isn't it?"

She smiles the most loving smile that he's ever been lucky to see. "It is. But dreams have to start somewhere."

 **A/N** Thank you for hanging out with me in dreamland, and thanks again to Perspex13 for letting me co-opt a line of his that became the prompt for this. I hope to be back soon with another story. Until then, happy new year.


End file.
